Is it SEO OK if i cloak internal links and put them in sidebar ?

[RajeshB]

Hi,

I just want to know if i cloak internal link/url and put them in sidebar?

Basically i am looking out to cloak below url which contains parameter

http://example.com/?tag=tag1+tag2

TO

http://example.com/someword/sometagtag

Is it SEO acceptable ?

Thanks, Raj

[GPainter]

Hi Raj,

If you're just trying to make the URL more user friendly but the content is the same it's fine. What Google doesn't like is if you're showing one thing to the users and another to the crawlers (there are some rare exceptions). However you're change would benefit users and Google likes users to be happy!

Hope that helps.

[iugac]

Hello,

I agree with Chris. Try to make the users happy and it will be ok.

One thing I would add though. I don't know how you plan to cloak the URL (in fact, I don't really know what cloaking means exactly in english), but be sure to avoid duplicate content since my guess is that the content is the same.

All the best,

Cristian

[TranslateMediaLtd]

Hi Raj

Chris is right. You'll be fine as long as you show the same content to both users and search engines. Presenting different content to users and search engines is what is commonly referred to as cloaking.

What you're referring to here is essentially a rewrite of the URL to make it search friendly. This is a common technique on sites using, for example, Apache's mod rewrite extension (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html).

The only issue is if search engines index both the search friendly and non-search-friendly URLs so I'd recommend placing a rel="canonical" tag on that page referencing the search friendly URL.

[ClaudioHeilborn]

Hi Rajesh

Just to confirm what Jusuf, Cristian & Chris told you...

If you are not trying to cheat google and just making urls more friendly, nothing will happen.

Help your users to navigate more confidently and the users will help you rank better.

Google has no opinion about that, what they (google) will always try to find is cheating about the content.

for example your url is about great outdoor life so you tweak your url from www.yourdomain.com/123454 to  www.yourdomain.com/living-in-the-dessert and you show content about living in the dessert. You must try to be honest on this, do not cloack just for SEO or prepare yourself to be punished by the big G

Also as Cristian said... take care of duplicate content!

Hope its useful for your purpose

Cheers

[RajeshB]

Thanks All for your quick response

yaa this is just to make urls google and user friendly. The content for both user and google will be same.

Its basically for my WordPress blog where filtering the results based on multiple tags slug(sorry, i haven't mentioned this earlier)

One more question: Which redirect type is best for this ?? 301, 302 or 307 ???

[TranslateMediaLtd]

Hi Rajesh

A rewrite is not a redirect. So whether it's a 301 etc is irrelevant.

Rewrites work without redirecting the user elsewhere and simply convert one URL structure to another.

Might be a good idea to talk to a developer about it because rewrites can cause issues with other pages or other rewrite rules if not implemented correctly.